Wonderment of One's Own Likeness
by Lady Mondegreen
Summary: Erik/Christine... can Erik handle the risk of having a deformed child? Read, review, yell at me via review and all will be right in my strange little mind.
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: Phantom and all its stuff belong to some corporation by now, blah, blah, blah.  
  
Let us disregard that silly little ending where Christine and Raoul get married... they are wrong for each other, Erik is infinitely better...  
  
Part 1  
  
Christine was still lying in her room when he returned home. The servants had doused most of the candles. Erik was very pleased with his "normal" mask, the servants hardly noticed anything. The red pigmentation cream he designed was also making his skin a good beige, and he hoped to finish the false nose (and a way of permanently attaching it) before Christine's next birthday. Erik had just returned from the market, finding some good parchment paper. He loved walking in the crowds, even though he knew they would be less kind if he went without his mask. With luck, after the preparations were final, he could attribute his sunken eyes to illness. People had pox scars; no one thought more of it.  
  
"Sir, she is still resting. Madame was quite ill to the stomach when you were out, and your dinner is in the warming cabinet. She said she cannot join you for dinner," the little maid Elle informed Erik. He dismissed her for the evening, though she lived with them. Elle was probably the one person Christine trusted almost as much as Erik. As he hung up his cloak and hat, he smiled to think of the true woman Christine had become. A far cry from the whiny, flighty girl he had first escaped from the Opera with. Two months after Erik's supposed death, Raoul (out celebrating at his bachelor party) had caught a stray duel bullet with his chest. He died, and since Mama Valerius had died (in heavy debt, with little inheritance for Christine) a month before, Christine was alone in the world. The Paris Opera would not renew her contract, they were afraid Erik would return. So Christine found a job as a chorus girl in a small theatre near Lyon. She took in sewing so as not to starve. The daroga had mentioned to Erik that there was a lovely mademoiselle singing in a particular theatre. He had gone to watch the performance. Christine was two years older and ten the wiser. Eventually, she did love him, mostly after he told her nearly every detail of his past. They married in a small church six months ago. And they sang, of course.  
  
"Christine?" Erik called softly in their dimly lit bedroom. The pale figure on the bed stirred and sat up. Christine smiled at him, but Erik took in her form with alarm. Her hair was limp and ragged, and she was very pale. He sat beside her and took her hand.   
"Christine, you didn't eat today." She let go of his hand and stood. "I don't want a lecture, Erik. And I'd like to get back to sleep."  
Erik stood. His long, narrow form towered over Christine. "I'm sorry, my dear. But if you don't feel well, you must see a doctor."  
She hugged him. "Of course. I know you only want to help, I've been feeling terribly of late."  
He looked at her again, more carefully now. "What pains you, Christine? There have been reports of a fever in the city."  
The smallish city, more of a large town really, that he had chosen to flee to was about twenty miles from the French south coast. Not close enough for any flood, but near enough to spend pleasant summer weeks there. Erik's allowance from the Opera had obviously not been spent in his time there, and he was confident it would hold the (m in considerable luxury until their deaths. Just to be safe, he still demanded an allowance ("insurance", the managers called it), albeit a smaller one. But there would be no purpose to that entire if Christine succumbed to illness and died.  
"I can't place the feeling. No pain, just... weightiness. More on my heart than my body."  
She smiled frailly at him. Erik felt uneasy, something he never liked feeling.   
Christine stood on her toes and kissed one masked cheek. "Go eat, Erik. I'll see the doctor first thing tomorrow."  
  
Erik was hunched over the piano in their parlor when Christine came in the next day. The piano was not the organ he had been forced to leave at the Opera house. Still, any music he could make was good enough. But he had been working on a piece for days, and he just was not happy with it. Christine came in the hall and followed the sounds of music and cursing in Persian to the parlor.  
"Still that piece, Erik? You are a terrible perfectionist," she called cheerfully.  
He laughed out loud.   
"Yes Christine, and hear how you turned out!"   
Before turning back to the piano, Erik filed the moment in his memory. Such a perfect exchange, as any happy normal wife would tease her happy normal husband.   
  
Christine sent the servants, except Elle and the cook, home for the night. She asked them to prepare Erik's favorites and to set the best china out. Christine hoped this all would go over well.  
  
When he sat to dinner, Erik noticed the places were set widthwise across from each other, instead of the proper lengthwise. The gaslights were out, but several candles were lit. He had seen Elle be ushered out by Christine. Christine was already seated, in her most flattering dress.   
"Are we celebrating, my dear?" he asked, a little suspiciously.  
"I hope so. Erik, would you do something for me?"  
"You know I would do most anything for you, Christine."  
She did not falter as she issued her command. "Remove your mask, please, Erik."  
He looked straight at her, startled. "Why, Christine? I'm not through with the... alterations, why on Earth do you want-"  
"Erik, you know how I love you, but save the litany and remove it, if you please."  
He reached to the sides of his face to break the seal and remove the mask slowly, still unsure. Four months ago, when Christine had asked him not to wear it to sleep, he didn't mind. Erik had made sure to go to bed after Christine had turned out the gaslights. This annoyed her, but she made no mention of it.   
  
He removed his mask, Christine rewarding Erik with a smile. His face did not bother her, and she was ashamed to think of how she recoiled long ago. Once, she had even told him of her worry that if she was considered beautiful, could that render her ugly inside? Erik had assured her not, and she was almost half sure his voice had choked when he did.   
"Before we start, I have one more thing to ask of you."  
If Erik had been less of a gentleman, he might have asked what else she wanted him to take off.  
"Erik, you must not hurt yourself."  
"Why would I, Christine?"  
"I'm not sure how to say this... but there will be someone else in the house in awhile, dear."  
Erik looked quizzically at her.  
"What I mean, dear, is I am going to have a child. Your child, of course, our child-"  
But Erik did not hear any more, the former Phantom of the Opera had fainted.  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Author's Note: People have pointed out that a lot of my stories have to do with character's pregnancies. I can only explain this: someone in my large family seems to have a baby every month, and I have seen every kind of hysteric related to the miracle of life, but also the happiness thereafter.   
  
But you d-mn well better review it, any suggestions, flames, and if you love it, that' good too  
  
  



	2. Visiting Old Friends

Thank you to my beta reader (of sorts) Kat, who got me in to this whole quasi-cult. And I realize Erik would probably wake up, but he's really tired, okay? I'm splicing together my opinion on his parent's from various books and even a few fics.  
  
Disclaimer: See part 1  
  
Part 2  
  
It had been a month since the dinner incident. Christine was worried; Erik had barely spoken to her at all. He was always at the piano, or outside. He didn't sleep. Erik had slept on the couch in his study the few days she had actually found him in the morning.   
  
Finally, it was too much to bear. She had not allowed him to find her again to be ignored. She felt it would be fruitless to argue with him, so Christine waited for Erik to come in that night. She crept downstairs an hour later to find him asleep on the couch. Christine pushed him until he rolled over, amazingly still asleep. She sat on the couch and folded her legs under her skirt. Erik moved again, so his head was beside her skirt. Christine realized he was wearing the mask. Maybe she should have let him wear it to sleep, she reflected. Christine had wanted him to feel that he didn't have to be ashamed around her. But maybe, in some way, she was trying to deaden herself against his face. She pulled the mask off his face, gazing down in the predawn half-light at his poor, terrible face.   
Christine's head spun. She rarely thought of Erik's twisted visage anymore, but he had been through thirty-five years of hell before that. The entire two years she had lived in poverty did not begin to compare to a day of his life.  
He began to stir and sat up.  
"Christine? You should be asleep," he told her.  
"Erik, you don't love me anymore, do you? Are you angry because I am carrying your child? I didn't plan to be, and I want to leave if you will be a distant father. I haven't seen you in a month!" Her outburst startled Christine more visibly than Erik.  
He contemplated.   
"I love you, Christine. But, what if..." he took one of her hands in both of his "our child should suffer, as I did, in my childhood?"  
He must be afraid our child will fear him, if the baby ever sees his true face, she thought.  
But realization struck her.  
What if their child looked like Erik? Deformed almost beyond recognition, never being able to enjoy real companionship? Did Erik think she could hate the child, treat him like Erik's mother had? Or love the child, but blame Erik for its deformity?   
"Can you bear that, Christine? A child, never able to play with other children without a mask? It would be my fault, carelessly fathering a baby condemned to a life of fear."  
His words echoed her horrible thoughts, and drowned out any others.  
  
After breakfast, Erik kissed her and told Christine he would be gone awhile.   
Four days at the most, he promised her.   
He wouldn't think of leaving unless it was terribly necessary.  
Christine was angry, but she hid it well enough to say good-bye to him  
  
Erik finally arrived late that day. The house he had been born in stood in front of him, old and creaky. There was a "Condemned" notice on the front gates, so he went around the back. Upstairs was the bedchamber of his late mother, the room where he had first drawn breath.  
Erik had heard his mother cry about the scene so many times; he could picture the scene perfectly. A last gasp, a push, then a baby's scream. The midwife calling on a priest. His mother, awakening hours later, eager to see the rosy, cooing treasure her late husband had bestowed in her and receiving him, scrawny, yellow, noseless creature. She had been in favor of drowning him in the nearest well, but the priest had talked her out of it.  
  
Erik strolled to the cellar, his bedroom for the first decade of his life. The spiders were only a bit worse than he remembered. He sat down on the cold stone floor. Erik did not wonder how he had survived. He did place his hand on the lower right part of his jaw. It was the only part of his face that was flawless. Sometimes, when he was very young and his mother was out, he would creep up to her room, holding her looking glass very close to this one patch of perfection and imagine himself a cherubic little boy. His mother would love him and never have any reason to cry except in happiness that her husband lived on in him. Erik had once heard his mother describe his father, a tall, stately man with fine black hair and charming moss green eyes. Erik assumed his golden eyes came from a mixture of his mother's gin colored brown eyes and his father's. He did become tall, but his hair was very thick. Erik thought he and Christine's baby might have her cat's brown eyes. Or golden eyes like his, which he felt would go nicely with her black-brown curls. And fair skin like hers. With her pert nose. But nothing would compliment his lack of one. Erik stood up suddenly at the thought and went out of the house.   
  
His next stop, a day later, was to a sparse field next to the Madeleine church. It could barely be called a graveyard, with few flowers to honor those who had passed with no one pulling at their hands to keep them back. Erik walked to a larger stone near the back. It read:  
Here lies Charles Mulheim  
1814-1844  
Next to him lies his wife Madeline Mulheim  
1816-1875  
  
Erik knelt next to his parents' gravestone. He placed the flowers he carried with him in front of the grave. Erik cleared his throat.  
"Mother, you never loved me. I cannot forgive you that. You were never asked to love my face. But there was a child under that, and he grew afraid and starved."  
He turned his head to his father's side of the stone.  
"Father, I never met you. I doubt you would have loved me either, but since you cannot see my face now... you would be proud of my life. A wife, music, and home. But I may not trust myself enough to have this child. Should it be condemned to a life like mine, I am afraid I might, in a delirium... want to spare him the agony."  
Erik rose. It did not help to do this. But his parents deserved a loyal son, if only a duty-bound one. Now to see real family. The daroga would be surprised to see him.  
  
"Erik? Christine hasn't thrown you out, has she?" Nadir asked as soon as Erik opened the door to his apartment.   
"No, I'm just visiting for today. I must be back soon; she will need me, in her condition. I'm afraid I've been off in my thoughts of late."  
The daroga studied Erik carefully.   
"I'm to assume baby, Erik? What are you doing about that?"  
Erik hung his coat and hat on a peg on the wall and sat across from his friend on one of the couches.  
"I'm not doing anything. I don't think we'll be able to do this. Too many risks..." He ran a hand over his masked face.   
"I would give anything to know what happened to me to make me as I am. What if my mother fell, or ate something to cause this... me?"  
The daroga laughed at Erik's logic, not at him.  
"Erik, you can't do anything about it. Whatever it looks like, the baby's mother will love it. Go home to your wife now, I'd kill you if I were her."  
Erik's face tensed pleasantly, the facsimile of a smile he offered to everyone except Christine. She had every right to be angered with him. Still, he felt he should stay a little while.  
"Nadir, any suggestions on names?"  
They both laughed.  
"Why don't you just have the child christened Erik the junior now and save Christine the trouble?"  
Erik sighed. "I doubt Christine would like that, I was thinking-"  
Nadir held up a hand. "Erik, I forgave you your sins, please don't bore me into reconsidering."  
Erik rose now, shaking the daroga's hand on his way out.  
"I'll send you the birth announcement," he called over his shoulder.  
"Just doesn't sending me anyone's funeral announcement for along time, Erik."  
  
Christine waited at home, sewing a christening dress for the baby. She sat in the bay window of Erik's study. She had already finished silk cradle wraps lined with fleece for the baby. Elle had to forcibly take her away from the window to eat, dress, and bathe. Christine insisted sleeping in Erik's study. She read a good deal of the books in the room in the five days he had been gone. Her life had alternated between sewing anything for the baby and reading Erik's books on trap doors and plays. Elle had organized a baby tea for Christine in a last-ditch attempt to get her out of the house. It had been a wonderful distraction for a few hours, but Erik was not back. Elle had told Christine all the sewing and studying was her way of preparing for the change in her life like a general stockpiling reasons and supplies for a long siege.  
She finished attaching the pearls to the neckline of the little gown and picked up the fleece to make receiving blankets.  
  
Near dusk that day, she heard a carriage approach the house. Erik stepped out and walked to the front door. The butler opened the door for him. He whisked in his characteristic manner, removing his cloak and hat. Erik saw her in the study doorway and walked over in crisp strides. He took one of her hands and kissed it.  
"Christine, I am so sorry, the roads were terrible. You look as though you are wasting away, my dear, what troubles you?"  
The tirade Christine had built up in the past two months rose up out of her lungs, but became caught in her throat. She could not speak. Christine pulled her hand out of his grasp and slowly walked upstairs until she could close the door and not have to think about his false face.  
  
Please, please, please, please review!  



	3. Understood

Disclaimer: See part 1   
  
A/N: I'm sorry this took so long to update (mutters incoherently about evil science courses and the pointlessness of long-term projects). Thank you all who reviewed! I am currently lacking a beta reader, so if anyone wants to proofread my stories should send me an e-mail. I hope the text is better now.   
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   
  
Erik was still troubled by why Christine was so angry. He had asked her what was wrong, to which she had contended nothing. He didn't know what else to do. The next day, very early, he went out to the marketplace.   
  
The fog had not quite burned off yet, so he had taken one of his lighter cloaks. Merchants were still setting out their wares. Even the ones already set up where lingering over a last cup of coffee. Few people roamed the market alleys. That was fine with Erik. Less people, less chance of pickpockets. Fewer lines, less stressful bargaining. Erik strode purposefully to the red-draped booth near the end of the street. The elderly man and woman who ran it sold silks and parchment paper, as well as the occasional musical instrument. Erik did not yet have a title for the new opera he was writing, but he went through parchment paper at an alarming rate. Thus, he had gotten to know the owners well.   
  
"Erik, out of paper so soon?" They addressed him by first name; they were considerably older than him.   
"Yes, Madame. My new work is progressing quickly."   
The woman smiled at him slyly.   
"Word has it you had better buy something for your little wife, Erik. And your child, too."   
He grimaced.   
"The only thing that spreads faster than fire is talk, Madame. Yes, Christine is with child."   
She began to gather paper together for him, placing it on the scale on her counter.   
"How much, Erik?"   
"The usual, Madame. Any advice for prospective parents?"   
She sighed.   
"Do not ever deny a child what you lacked as a child. Every person has something they sorely missed in childhood. But remember, if you overzealously make up for your parents' shortcomings, you are probably neglecting elsewhere."   
They smiled together at the contradictory advice.   
Erik paid her, quite generously tipping her, at which the old woman frowned.   
"Thank you, Madame. This should be good for about, oh, a week..."   
She laughed.   
"She's a good person, Erik, to put up with you. I suggest you start planning the nursery now, six months left!"   
Erik was totally shocked by that statement. He walked away from the booth in a daze. It was true. Like it or not, ugly or beautiful, girl or boy, he would be responsible for a human life entirely dependant on him in six months. Erik hurried home. Now he had much to plan.   
  
About three weeks later, he led a blindfolded Christine into what was formerly a guest suite on the third floor. Erik stood behind her and let the blindfold fall. Christine surveyed the room and her heart sank. It was an exquisite room, decorated with so many wonderful toys and carefully crafted furniture. Christine walked over to the bassinette and numbly tapped the bells hanging over it, each of which produced a different note   
Erik moved closer behind her.   
"Do you think our child will be happy in here?"   
"It is very cheerful," came the stoic reply.   
Erik's brow furrowed and he spoke in her ear, a little bit tersely.   
"Christine, I am trying to make amends for leaving you and not being very attentive. Why are you so angry?"   
She whirled to face him. Christine was a pacific person by nature, but she was very angry now.   
"You want to know why, Erik? You are not doing anything to show me you will love me once our child is born, or that you will be a real parent. We will _both_ be the parents of this child Erik, and we do not work separately! You haven't asked me once about how I would handle any situation with our baby! I love you because you love _and_ respect me! I thought you did, at least. Poor children are happy, not just the ones always surrounded by beauty! What if we have another child after this? You aren't that old, I'm only twenty-five! What if our child is an incredible genius? What if it's not? Are you going to be upset if it's a girl? Are you going to hold my hand when I give birth? Or wait in the hall? Let me remind you of who is taking the physical risks! Of who has seen so little of the world! Of who isn't the fabulous, infamous, many-talented genius! Of who had her mother die in childbirth and is terrified of sharing the same fate! Of who also has fears, and hopes, and questions, because you aren't the only one, Erik!"   
  
She turned and ran out of the room. Erik stood stock-still. That's all he could think of, for the moment.   
  
Please let me know if the chapters are starting to sound cloned, people have complained in the past. SO... should it be a boy or a girl? Both? Have Christine miscarry? I might not use what everyone says, but I am brain-dead from school and need a little help here.


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